


the rest of you, the best of you, honey, belongs to me

by deandratb



Series: Maybe In Another Life [8]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, and other quandries, when your lover's in a cult
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 15:54:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16452869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deandratb/pseuds/deandratb
Summary: FP asks where Alice's loyalty lies, with the Farm playing such a large role in her life. Blatant wish fulfillment set sometime after "As Above, So Below."





	the rest of you, the best of you, honey, belongs to me

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think Alice's loyalties will be sorted out cleanly or easily when the time comes, but you know what? They should be, gosh darn it. Let me have this.

“Do you trust me?”

FP’s question interrupted the quiet afterglow. 

These days, most of their relationship was afterglow. Between Alice’s work with the Farm and him advising the younger Serpents, they stole time when the kids were out, when their schedules aligned...and one sweltering August night when Betty was asleep and it had been too damn long and they were just desperate enough to risk it.

They had yet to have The Talk, and both of them were secretly hoping they never would. Too much history behind them, land mines waiting to go off with one wrong step. What they had now was perfect. Undisturbed. 

She tilted her face up, running her fingertips along his jaw. “You know I do. I trust you with my life, FP.” 

 _How could she not?_  her tone implied. She trusted FP with Betty, and her daughter’s safety meant so much more to her than her own.

He kissed the top of her head in response--but the tension in his shoulders, rippling down his arms as they curved around her, didn’t ease up. 

“Why do you ask?”

“I was just thinking.” FP chuckled. “Out of character, I know.”

“Funny. Thinking about what? Do you trust  **me**?”

“I do.”

“Then why?”

“I still haven’t met Edgar. I get the feeling I’m not gonna. And that’s okay,” FP rushed to add. “I don’t want to butt in where I’m not welcome...I don’t want you to feel like you can’t live your life--like I’m trying to control you.”

Alice reached for his hand, lacing her fingers through his.

“You’ve never been that way,” she pointed out quietly. “Even when we were kids. If anything, you were the opposite.”

Alice rolled off him, propping herself on one elbow to look him in the eye. “You haven’t answered the question, FP. If this is going to work--keep working--you know how important honesty is. Edgar says--”

FP shoved himself up, leaving the sheet behind as he sighed. “That’s the thing, Alice. I don’t know Edgar. I know he’s helped...is helping you. I know you’re grateful.”

“Are you--FP, tell me you’re not jealous. Of Edgar!” She laughed, light as a bell, this newly-centered version of the woman he loved. He shook his head. 

“No, not jealous. If something was going on, you’d tell me. Like I said, I trust you. It’s just...”

He ran a hand through his hair, squinting at her. Wordlessly, Alice stretched across the bed to hand him the glasses from his side table. He was still self-conscious about wearing them, but she liked the thin wire frames. Sober and less weighed down by secrets, FP carried his age well.

Plus, it was nice, the way he looked at her when he could actually see her. Forsythe Jones Junior had always **really**  seen her, and he always stared a little too long, like he was seeing the whole world inside one person.

“Here’s the truth.” He reached over the tangled sheets to hold her hand, sorting his words out slowly. “I would kill or die for you, Alice. And I’ve never doubted that you care about me. Even when you shouldn’t. Y’know?”

“Yes.”

“Now, there’s all these others. Polly I get, that’s your girl. But the Farm, they’re new. They’re strangers. Maybe not to you, not anymore, but you’re telling them a lot, and I barely know anything about these people.”

“Well, what do you want to know?”

“Nothing about them. Not my place, really. You’ll let me in when you’re ready. But Alice, like you said. If this is going to work...I need to know who you trust more.”

“Ultimatums, FP? That’s not your style.”

“Nah, no ultimatums. I’m not saying you have to choose me. I’m not even expecting you to trust me. There’s a lot, between us, that can’t be swept away in a summer.”

Exasperated by how difficult it could be, loving a Jones man _\--conversations about feelings were more painful than pulling teeth sometimes--_ Alice shoved her hair behind her ears and sat up.

“Then what, pray tell, are you getting at?”

“I just want to know where we stand. To be prepared. If it came down to it, and you had to choose, would you choose your new family at the Farm?”

“It’ll never come to that,” she said. “Edgar and the others, they want me to be happy. You make me happy. They support us.”

“And I love that. I love you,” he insisted. “But after the last year, anything is possible and you know it. So,  **what if** , Al?”

FP rested a hand on her hip through the sheet covering her. “I won’t be mad. We never made each other any promises. But if it was them or me...”

Alice squeezed her eyes shut, trying to push past the way she always responded to his touch and give him a serious answer. She couldn’t imagine it. 

_She didn’t want to imagine it._

But he had put it in pretty stark terms, and using those as a gauge...could she picture herself killing for the Farm? For Betty? For FP?

She would kill for her daughter, without hesitation. Betty was so much like her, for good and for ill, and despite all the evil inside Hal, the best of them both was passed down to their girls.

 _Would she kill to save Polly?_  She would fight for her too, but a part of Alice--a secret, shameful part--had never felt the connection to Polly that she did to Betty. Whether it was losing Charles or the postpartum depression, there had always been a struggle there. A detachment. It wasn’t Polly's fault, she blamed herself entirely, but the truth was, she’d had a harder time loving her.

As for the Farm, under extreme circumstances? To save them?  _Well, they had saved her,_ she reasoned. But despite the gratitude, and the trust, and the loyalty she felt...no. No, she wouldn’t put herself at risk that way. Her loyalty had its limits, and the whole reason she felt so safe with the Farm was the fact that they’d never ask for that kind of sacrifice.

FP...god, FP.  _That was the question, wasn’t it?_  What they meant to each other, what she wanted. How open she was willing to be with him. 

It should be complicated; everything about them was. And had been. But this one thing was simple. Logic and reason had nothing to do with it. Alice opened her eyes to watch FP watching her, pretending her answer wasn’t the sort of decision that could move the earth, and she smiled. 

“If it was them or you, Forsythe, I’d choose you. Not that it matters,” she added firmly, pointing a finger his way. “But since you asked.”

Alice leaned in to kiss him. “I chose you today, and I’ll choose you again tomorrow. And the day after...”

“We’ll see how we feel then,” FP replied, grinning against her mouth. “I know, I know. Like they say in AA, one day at a time.”

“Hmm. In this scenario, does that make me your addiction, or your recovery?”

His grin widened as she let the sheet drop, along with the conversation. “I think both, Alice. Definitely both.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title borrowed from "NFWMB" by Hozier.
> 
> Also, absent evidence to the contrary, I'm assuming Alice kept her married name. Distancing herself from her murderous husband would make sense...but not with her focus on accepting the past rather than avoiding it. Her girls are Coopers, she chose to become a Cooper--I think she'd live with her history there, not erase it.
> 
>  
> 
> _I've fallen into Falice and I can't get out! Come flail with me on tumblr @ actuallylorelaigilmore._


End file.
